The Kavanagh Lecture, presented by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, is named for the late Professor Emeritus of Liturgics Aidan J. Kavanagh O.S.B., and given in conjunction with Convocation Week at Yale Divinity School.

This year's speaker is John D. Witvliet, the director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and professor of worship, theology, and congregational and ministry studies at Calvin College.

Lecture: The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship: Overlapping Scripts in the Unfolding Drama of Liturgical Performance."

The talk describes a sampling of the multiple ways that the biblical Psalms function within the script of Christian worship in the West, exploring how rubrics, formal and informal liturgical gestures, and musical motifs frame the reception of the biblical text. It draws on examples across the spectrum of denominational traditions, and asks how recent biblical scholarship might inform and challenge emerging work on the Psalms in liturgy, preaching, pastoral care, education, and Christian witness.

John Witvliet is director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and serves as professor of music and worship at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary, respectively. He also teaches in the religion department at Calvin College. His areas of interest include the history of Christian worship, worship practices in various denominations, biblical and systematic theology of worship, the role of music and the arts in worship, and consulting with churches on worship renewal.

A graduate of Calvin College, Dr. Witvliet holds graduate degrees in theology from Calvin Theology Seminary, in choral music from the University of Illinois, and the Ph.D. in liturgical studies and theology from the University of Notre Dame.

In the lecture, Dr. Plaskow shares a section of a book on God and feminism that she is currently working on with fellow Yale graduate student Carol P. Christ. The lecture traces the development of her understanding of the relationship between God and evil from her adolescence to the present, with special attention to the impact of feminism on her concept of God.

Judith Plaskow is professor emerita of religious studies at Manhattan College and Sally Priesand Visiting Professor of Jewish Women's Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. She is a Jewish feminist theologian who has been teaching, writing and speaking about Jewish feminism and feminist studies in religion for over forty years. With Carol P. Christ, she is co-editor of Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion and Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, anthologies of feminist theology used in many women's studies and religious studies courses. With Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, she co-founded the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, co-edited it for its first decade, and is currently co-editor with Melanie Johnson-DuBaufre. She is author of Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective and The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics 1972-2003. She is also a past president of the American Academy of Religion. She and Carol Christ are currently at work on a book tentatively entitled Goddess and God After Feminism.

From October 11, 1952 to May 3, 1953 Zora Neale Hurston wrote twenty stories for the Pittsburgh Courier Newspaper detailing a landmark case in interracial relations. Using her distinct voice and powerful prose, Hurston’s account of the trial of Ruby Jackson McCollum is a cautionary tale about injustice in one of this country’s most famous murder cases. This lecture places in dramatic relief not only the trial itself, a trial that shook the foundations of racial segregation, but Hurston’s fight to save McCollum from the electric chair, offers resources for 21st century ethicists wrestling with new possibilities for human existence in the midst of the existing social order.

Margaret Farley delivers the second Nathaniel W. Taylor Lecture on the topic "Desires, Loves, and Reasons."

Addressing questions of the meaning and possibility of human freedom of choice, Farley's lectures speak to problems raised by scientists, philosophers, and theologians. The central element is a descriptive analysis of the experience of free choice—not the question of whether there can be free choice, but on the structure of what we choose when we choose, raising the further question of whether every choice is ultimately a choice of what and how to love.

The Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectureship in Theology was created in 1902 by a gift from Rebecca Taylor Hatch of Brooklyn, New York, in memory of her father, who was Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology from 1822 to 1858.

Addressing questions of the meaning and possibility of human freedom of choice, Farley’s lectures speak to problems raised by scientists, philosophers, and theologians. The central element is a descriptive analysis of the experience of free choice—not the question of whether there can be free choice, but on the structure of what we choose when we choose, raising the further question of whether every choice is ultimately a choice of what and how to love.

The Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectureship in Theology was created in 1902 by a gift from Rebecca Taylor Hatch of Brooklyn, New York, in memory of her father, who was Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology from 1822 to 1858.

The annual lecture is intended to bring the contributions of African American scholars, social theorists, pastors, and social activists to YDS and to the wider New Haven community. Alexander was selected to compose and read an original poem at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, becoming just the fourth poet in modern American history to read at a presidential swearing-in ceremony

The Lyman Beecher Lectureship was founded in 1871 by a gift from Henry W. Sage of Brooklyn, NY, as a memorial to the great divine whose name it bears, to sponsor an annual series of lectures on a topic appropriate to the work of the ministry.

Invasion of the Dead: Preaching Resurrection through the lens of Apocalyptic Eschatology

The Kavanagh Lecture, presented by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, is named for the late Professor Emeritus of Liturgics Aidan J. Kavanagh O.S.B., and given in conjunction with Convocation Week at Yale Divinity School.

The Lyman Beecher Lectureship was founded in 1871 by a gift from Henry W. Sage of Brooklyn, NY, as a memorial to the great divine whose name it bears, to sponsor an annual series of lectures on a topic appropriate to the work of the ministry.

Invasion of the Dead: Preaching Resurrection through the lens of Apocalyptic Eschatology

The Lyman Beecher Lectureship was founded in 1871 by a gift from Henry W. Sage of Brooklyn, NY, as a memorial to the great divine whose name it bears, to sponsor an annual series of lectures on a topic appropriate to the work of the ministry.

Invasion of the Dead: Preaching Resurrection through the lens of Apocalyptic Eschatology

MacCulloch considers the cultural and religious unity of the medieval Western Church, a wholly exceptional phenomenon in Christian history, and draws on his experience of writing and filming an overview history of Christianity to consider how easily matters might have been different in the Christian West. He identifies Martin of Tours as a key figure, but also speculates on what Western Christianity would have been like in the perfectly plausible event of an Arian outcome to its emergence from the disappearance of the Western Roman Empire.

In light of the special significance of the relationship of Jesus to Galilee prompted by intense archeological investigation and renewed debate about the Historical Jesus, Freyne presented a summary of the relevant new archaeological data from Galilee.

In light of the special significance of the relationship of Jesus to Galilee prompted by intense archeological investigation and renewed debate about the Historical Jesus, Freyne presented a summary of the relevant new archaeological data from Galilee.

In light of the special significance of the relationship of Jesus to Galilee prompted by intense archeological investigation and renewed debate about the Historical Jesus, Freyne presented a summary of the relevant new archaeological data from Galilee.